2012/05/13

Assume that after elections two coalitions are formed. Let’s call them Player1 and Player2. Player1, although they can rule, wants Player2 to join them in forming a Government. Player2 refuses and aims for reelection where they believe that they will be in a better position. It is all a game of success and failure on the government to be formed:

The Government Game

So in the case where Player 2 believes that Player 1 cannot make it alone, they bet on their downfall in order to win the next elections whenever they are. And while Player 1 knows that they cannot make it, even with Player 2 on board, they push for their participation so as to make them irrelevant too in the next elections.

2012/01/31

Russia alleged that an arms control race was unfolding in cyberspace and that constraints on state capabilities were necessary

Now where had I heard that before? It was in 2009 while watching a presentation given by iDefense’s Eli Jellenc. In it he presented the following variation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma:

The Security Dilemma

The basic premise of the model is that efforts to increase your own security makes others insecure. In Cyber warfare it is easier to attack than to defend a complex system (or at least it feels that way since time is on the side of the persisent, patient attacker). It is also very difficult at times to distinguish between offense and defense and the fact of the matter is that both the digital underground and the private sector have well established offensive capabilities for hire. The result of the situation is that everybody is forced to deploy offensive capabilies with a spiral of mistrust being built at the same time as a side effect.

“Why, foreign leaders ask, would the world’s only superpower seek radical improvement of its armed forces in the absence of a clear threat? Given the expense of accumulating national power, some may assume it is meant to be used and conclude that the United States is improving its military capabilities in order to impose its will on others. The United States can either accept such suspicions or find a new, less intimidating method of pursuing the revolution in military affairs, perhaps through greater cooperation with potential allies. The problem is that such cooperation could speed the dissemination of new technology, techniques, and ideas, and thus contribute to the emergence of challengers. But if the United States unilaterally pursues the RMA, other states will respond, whether symmetrically or asymmetrically. In turn, knowing the benign intentions of the United States, American leaders and planners will consider this threatening. Why, they will ask, would other states seek to improve their military capability unless contemplating aggression? Vigorous American pursuit of the RMA may make other nations feel less secure and their response will make the United States feel less secure. The result may be a spiral of mutual misperception and a new arms race, albeit a qualitative rather than quantitative one.”

Ironic how I was scolded in a meeting a couple of months ago for mentioning Game Theroy as a tool to study strategies (“Theory is one thing, reality is another”) when in fact we see how such simple models are suited to study reality.

2011/11/24

“In recent years it is becoming more apparent to students of Confederate history that the Confederacy collapsed more from internal than from external causes and the most disastrous of these internal ailments was the attempt of the southern people to practice their theory of state rights during the war. This destroyed the possibility of cooperation, embittered and demoralized the people, and pitted the state governments against the Confederate government like hostile powers. This struggle between the states and the Confederate government extended into many fields, mostly related to the conduct of the war. One of the most important of these fields was the matter of local defense. It is the object of this paper to present a careful study of the policy of local defense in the Confederacy, and show how it contributed to the downfall of that government.”

How’s that any different from the EU (the Confederacy) and the financial crisis (the conduct of war) it is in right now?

postmaster: n.

The email contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the network. Often, but not always, the same as the admin. The Internet standard for electronic mail (RFC-822) requires each machine to have a ‘postmaster’ address; usually it is aliased to this person.